I attended a wedding this weekend, a couple that my wife knows through her work. It was nice and all. But the pastor annoyed me. Oh, he spoke well and convincingly and right purtily. *grin* But he delved quite a bit into what I call apologetic revisionism. Twisting and contorting Old Testament scripture and Jewish [...]
READ MORE »Monthly archives for July, 2006
Big Bang Whoa, Redux
Back last October I wrote a blog regarding some misconceptions about the Big Bang: “Mind-Blowing Big Bang Developments.” In it I describe how like most people, I suffered under a completely misguided and erroneous misconception of what the Big Bang was. Like most people I thought it was everything collected in a single point and [...]
READ MORE »Is the government trying to kill us?
Phil Plait at Bad Astonomy blog asks just that: Is the government trying to kill us? I kept trying to figure out what parts to just quote, but I can’t. The whole article is important and necessary, and I’m reprinting it below. Please take a moment to read it, and visit Phil’s blog and some [...]
READ MORE »CNN.com – Why is the president ignoring our laws? – Jul 26, 2006
CNN.com – Dobbs: Why is the president ignoring our laws? – Jul 26, 2006 Excellent article. Good question: why?! The article mentions that bush, as all presidents have, “has solemnly sworn to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution of the United States.” Yet a bipartisan, 11-member committee of The American Bar Association “claims President Bush [...]
READ MORE »The Depressing State of Public School Textbooks
This week’s The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe has an interview with Bill Bennetta who’s a part of The Textbook League (http://www.textbookleague.org/). A watchdog group that monitors school textbooks and tries to get them improved. But the deal is, the textbook oligopoly of 4 publishers that publish all the textbooks perpetuate generations of plagiarism, generations [...]
READ MORE »Writing and Blog update
Weird. I work on my blog on two different machines: A WindowsXP Pro with Firefox and IE 7 beta, and a Fedora Core 5 with Firefox and Opera, and my current blog layout has always looked fine. But I had someone tell me recently, and show me screenshots, of my blog’s layout completely wacked. I [...]
READ MORE »Earth? Pah! We don’t need no stinkin’ Earth!
Good ole Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has an article today: “NASA decides there’s no place like home, and home is no place.” He discusses the fact that due to probable pressure from the bush Administration, NASA’s official mission statement has removed the phrase: “To understand and protect our home planet….” This of course has [...]
READ MORE »Wealth and Science
“Bad Astronomer” Phil Plait has a blog entry today: “Wealth of Science.” I really can’t say anything that could possibly add to what he has to say, except maybe Carl Sagan discusses this topic extensively in his book “Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” and I recommend everyone should read this [...]
READ MORE »Grand Ole Party: The American Taliban
If you’re a pre-Reagan Republican, it’s time to either take back your party or form a new one. Because the current Republican Party has been completely coopted by the American Taliban. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has a post today: Am I Partisan? When I’m Forced To Be. He mentions how being ignorant and anti-science [...]
READ MORE »Vote for my Story?
Gather.com (sort of like MySpace, but a little more grown up and meant for writers and artists and essayists, etc, vs. for goths, emos, and angsty teens and predators of teens,) is running a short fiction/non-fiction competition where the winner gets to have their previously unpublished story put on Amazon Shorts–a place where people can [...]
READ MORE »Shakespeare Stout
Shakespeare Stout My review. From: Rogue Ales Brewery / Brewer’s on the Bay in Oregon, United States Style: American Stout overall: 3.75 appearance: 4.5 | smell: 2.5 | taste: 4 | mouthfeel: 4 | drinkability: 3.5 I couldn’t really detect a scent. (But then, I may have allergies acting up.) But the pour was great! [...]
READ MORE »Jesus’ Secret Identity?
Here’s something interesting. Lucifer is mentioned only once in the Bible: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!” – Isaiah 14:12 (NRSV) (Of course in contrast to the popular belief, Lucifer when read in context of the chapter, is likely refering to the King of Babylon, not some fallen angel [...]
READ MORE »Awesome Shuttle launch videos
Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy posted this: Bad Astronomy Blog » Awesome Shuttle launch videos! And he’s not kidding!! That is absolutely awesome video! Ah, the fruits of human discovery, the understanding of the immutable laws of physics and chemistry, the wonders of science! It’s truely awe inspiring.
READ MORE »No Proof of Ann Coulter’s Brain Exists, part 2
Oh. My. God. Right Wing News’ interview with Ann Coulter This woman proves so often that she barely deserves to be taking up space on the planet, much less that she should be considered “intelligent” or “well researched” as her fans claim. Nearly every single thing she says in this is outright wrong, misleading, or [...]
READ MORE »A Healthy Heaping Dose of Reason
Skeptic Rant just put out a list of some of the top postings in the Skeptic Circle here: Thirsty for Truth? Try Skeptic Cola Some very excellent articles in there! Check them out. While you’re at it, give a look at the List of Cognitive Biases. See how many you fall victim to. Be honest [...]
READ MORE »The Color of Controversy
Today’s blog entry on the site for Web comic Ctrl+Alt+Del has an interesting topic: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/index.php?t=archives&date=last#1153 It’s about the use of color, skin color, in advertising, that some could take as offensive. The comic artist, Tim, observes that an advertisement like that in the U.S. would be lambasted and taken down in an instant because of [...]
READ MORE »The Ignorant Arrogance of the Anti-Science
I keep promising to never bring up evolution/Intelligent Design conflict again (see: The Final Words (for me) on Creationsm vs. Evolution from last year.) For example, when NewSojourn a while back made the post: Watching the War, I just ignored it. But then I came upon Intelligent Design the Future’s post: Evolution’s Fortunate Coincidence. Sometimes, [...]
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